Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to an image forming apparatus, a control device, and a screen display method.
Related Art
An image forming apparatus that executes processing, for example, scan distribution, according to a workflow in which a plurality of types, or steps, of processing are defined by an administrator is known.
In recent years, a configuration in which an image forming apparatus including a main apparatus and a control device separated from the main apparatus has evolved to the point where the main apparatus performs functions related to image forming, such as copying, scanning, faxing, and printing, and the control device performs the types of information processing that hitherto has generally been performed by the main apparatus. With such a configuration, a user sets a function to be performed using one of the main apparatus and the control device via an operating screen displayed on the control device.
The image forming apparatus may store information to be used in the control device in a nonvolatile memory (e.g., hard disc drive (HDD)) of the main apparatus because of limitations of the nonvolatile memory (e.g., NAND) of the control device. In this case, the control device obtains the information from the nonvolatile memory of the main apparatus, stores the information in a volatile memory (e.g., random access memory (RAM)) of the control device, and processes the information.
However, generally, the capacity of the volatile memory of the control device is smaller than that of the nonvolatile memory. The volatile memory of the control device also needs to maintain an area to perform the information processing. It is, accordingly, difficult to store a large amount of information obtained from the nonvolatile memory of the main apparatus in the volatile memory of the control device.
When, for example, a user sets a desired operation to be performed, it can be supposed that the control device obtains screen information required to display an operating screen corresponding to the function from the nonvolatile memory of the main apparatus and stores the screen information in the volatile memory of the control device to perform display processing for the operating screen. The larger the number of operating screens corresponding to the function instructed by the user is, the larger the data size of the screen may become, which results in slower processing and display delays.